


Meant to be (anything for you)

by JaqofSpades



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, Revo Redux Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-02
Updated: 2014-04-02
Packaged: 2018-01-17 22:13:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1404397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaqofSpades/pseuds/JaqofSpades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bass Monroe had been a soldier.  Then a cop.  Now he's just a loser.  So why is life throwing him a second chance with the very last person he deserves?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Meant to be (anything for you)

**Author's Note:**

> For the Revolution Redux fic challenge, to Terapsina's prompt: _Police Officer AU: Detective Monroe is required to get a new partner... said partner is a rookie.. said partner also turns out to be his best friend's and former partner's very attractive and very OFF LIMITS niece Charlotte Matheson._
> 
> Title and overall obsessive kink inspired by "There was a time" by Guns n Roses (Chinese Democracy.)

Sometimes he can't remember what they'd fought about. 

“Hey, Miles. Did you hear …” he would start, and then blink, shocked, when there was some lunkhead in the passenger seat. He would schmooze and joke – he was Monroe after all – but they all got pissed at him sooner or later. That, or he just got sick of trying. But Clayton is threatening to boot him out on his ass if he doesn't play nice, so he's been towing the line.

But surely the bitch had to be joking with this one.

His new partner is staring out the car window, face tight and long dark gold hair glinting in the black embrace of his not-so-standard-issue car. 

“1977 Pontiac GTO,” he explains, but under her casual shrug is an admiration that proves she's a Matheson. If nothing else, she understands cars. What about the rest, though? Does she even know? 

Can't exactly start a conversation with “hey, kid, I got your uncle booted from the Force because he didn't fancy running away with me. I destroyed his career and lost my best friend, but it's okay, though. We're still good for the occasional fuck.”

Bass snorts at how that conversation might go, and young officer Matheson darts him a wary glance with those startling blue eyes. 

“Something funny?” One eyebrow is hitched high in question, and it's the ache in his chest that tells him just how much that reminds him of Miles. But her pink, pouting mouth is all her own, and when she worries her top lip with her tongue, the bolt of lust nearly incinerates him. 

Bass needs her to look the fuck away, so he shakes his head like the grizzled cop he is, and throws the siren up on the roof. They're already moving by the time he lets himself shift in his seat enough to give Big Bass a bit of breathing room. 

Yeah, this was going to be a problem. 

*

He manages to hide it until halfway through their second week. Some street punk was flying on the crappy talcum powder mix that passed as blow downtown, high enough to ignore Charlie's gun and barrel straight over the top of her.

She's icing the footprint-shaped bruise on her belly when he loses it. 

“Fucking unacceptable, officer! You have that fucking gun, you fucking use it! That kid could have pushed you into traffic, kicked you in the head, pulled out a knife and slit your throat!” he bellows, the red mist snapping at his every nerve ending.

He doesn't even have the sense to move backwards when she leaps to her feet and yells straight into his face, hair escaping from her braid and oh fuck, gorgeous breasts just trying to leap out of the flimsy tank she'd been wearing underneath her uniform. Just as well she's too angry to see him looking.

“Well, detective, I wasn't about to shoot an unarmed kid. I have a gun for self-defence, and when I see a need to use it, I damn well will! That boy was smaller than me and probably five years younger!”

“He was fucking high! You know – that kind of high you have where you're fucking ten foot tall and just begging for the bullets!”

She probably doesn't know, he realises a moment later, and it makes him angrier than ever.

“Only a Matheson would stand there and bleat stop and actually expect a fucked up druggie to listen! What, you think he'd take one look at those pretty blue eyes and beg you to arrest him? C'mon, Charlotte,” he thundered. “This is the South Bronx, not fucking midtown Manhattan!”

Her eyes narrow and a punch whistles past his ear. It was purely reflex, he rationalises later. Pull her in by her fist, tight to his chest. Roar into her face.

Die a little at the sweetness of her breath, and the sudden hot awareness in her eyes.

Bass forces himself to take a step back, and tells himself he won't be having that reflex again. And he's gonna forget all about that little noise she made, and the feel of her body, taut and lithe as she arched under his hands.

(Taut and lithe and burning hot and her eyes begging him to touch her and fuck, his belly is covered in just how much he's forgetting her, hours of forgetting every night.)

*

“So apparently you know my Uncle.”

So much scorn you'd think he was a stain on the bottom of her shoe. Oh, she's Rachel's kid for sure.

“Used to.”

“Until you sold him out, my mom says.”

“Your Mom says a lot of stuff, kiddo. You figured out what's true yet?”

Charlie glares at him but he's pretty sure that particular version of family bliss hasn't changed. His stomach still lurches when he thinks about that mad year after Iraq, the two of them young and stupid and so fucking shellshocked that he didn't even know how to protest when Miles started hooking up with Rachel. And by the time they graduated the academy as cops, Miles was so crushed that “I told you so” would have been just plain mean. They'd met Nora on the gun range, and Bass had been hopeful for a while, but all they'd achieved in the end was to make three people miserable instead of two. 

“Yeah, she said you hated her. But you don't even know her,” Charlie says coldly.

Bass shrugs, not wanting to get into that. No one fucking knew Rachel, they just shared oxygen with her. Funny, though, how Charlie had flinched when he'd sounded off about her mother's aversion to the truth.

Maybe a Matheson had finally seen the light. Good, he thinks. Maybe he'll get to keep this one.

Bass staggers as if he's taken a roundhouse to the gut. He doesn't do permanent. Doesn't even do a few weeks at a time. Not since ...

She could easily be Miles' kid, he reminds himself, even if there's nothing of him in her face. But when she moves, when she pins him with those ludicrously beautiful eyes and huffs her discontent … yeah. She could. She has that same thing where she gets on her high horse, and won't leave it be 'til he's aching to shut her up whichever way works best. 

Fucking Mathesons.

He's had therapy about this. Clayton made it one of the conditions of his reinstatement. Maybe he'll thank her one day, because it wasn't useless. The shrink warned him to be wary of slipping back into old patterns, old obsessions, and right now, it sounds like fucking impeccable advice. He thought he was done with this shit – too fucking old – but his cock doesn't seem to have figured that out yet. He's permanently hard, and freaking sore from the number of times he has to jack off just to get through the day. And now she's bringing Miles into it.

“Detective Monroe?”

Well lah di dah. He fakes a smile in her direction and looks about for a diversion, all sorts of glib lies dancing on his tongue. But he wants to know where this is coming from, and maybe he's willing to admit he owes Miles a thing or two.

“Shit went down with your uncle. Not just work shit – personal shit. You wanna know more, you ask him.”

“Mom said not to tell him. But I thought he deserved to know.”

Bass flinches. “And?”

“He punched a hole in the wall. Had to beg him not to go and see Clayton – he thinks I'm five years old.”

“Nah, kid. You wouldn't be here if he didn't think you could handle it. But, fuck it, he's gotta know ...”

He can't complete the sentence. Charlie doesn't need to know that he'd do anything for Miles. Fuck that – Miles doesn't need to know. But the real sting of it is that he and Charlie were actually working out. Kid was smart, and didn't take it fucking personally when he had to retreat into asshole mode. He'd would have done it for her anyway.

“Know what?”

He tries to wave it away, but she glares so fiercely it makes him laugh.

“I've got your back. You know. Like partners do.”

Charlie rolls her eyes but lets him stop there. Miles wouldn't have, he thinks gratefully. Miles would have snarked a bit more and picked away at the moment till Bass got jacked of it and said something nasty to make him go away.

Charlie just looks out the window with a huge smile, and sneaks the occasional grin at him, all cat-that-ate-the-cream satisfied. Bass spends the rest of the day trying not to think about the way every one of those smiles makes his heart thump. 

His hard cock just might be the least of his worries. 

*

Thursday lunchtimes is his regular slot kicking ass in the NYPD gym. He's three rounds in when he lifts his head to find Charlie Matheson leaning on the wall opposite, eyes fixed on him as he disposes of fighter after fighter.

At first, her eyes are wide with surprise, and if he showboats a little, well – he's earned the right. The oldest of his opponents is ten years his junior, and some of them are younger than Charlie herself, and he's taught every one of them everything they know. Sixteen years he's been teaching kickboxing and karate in this gym, and he's its undisputed master. 

Bass doesn't even bother to give his opponents his full attention. That's how he catches the moment intrigue gives way to sensuality on Charlie's face. Those watchful blue eyes narrow to half-mast, and she starts to fidget a little, crossing and uncrossing her legs, as her gaze roams all over his bare torso. 

He tries not to swagger as he makes his way over to her afterwards. “Enjoy the show?”

Her pink tongue swipes slowly over her bottom lip, and she's a few beats too slow in lifting her gaze from his sweat-beaded chest. “Hell yeah.” 

She flushes, and he answers the question in her eyes with a smirk. Yes, missy, that was exactly as lecherous as it sounded. 

“Better let you get dressed before we go back on shift,” she says hurriedly, and looks away. 

Too late, he thinks. He knows now. 

Charlotte Matheson wants a taste of him, and sooner or later he's gonna have to decide what to do about it.

“Yeah, yeah. Duty calls. But I could make some time to show you a thing or two if you're interested in self-defence. For women, kickboxing's a good way to go.”

“Funny. Uncle Miles thought the same. But I figure a new sparring partner won't hurt.”

She shoots him a saucy grin and he does his best not to grin right back. No point telling the entire world he's a dirty old man salivating at the chance to roll around on the mat with a girl barely out of her teens. And he's feeling bad, because he knows he's just found the easy way out.

Letting her decide for him.

It's quarter to ten when his phone rings that night. He's idly surfing for porn, clicking past one blonde after another, and it's not 'til he hears her voice that he realises why.

“Watcha doing?”

“Next question. You?”

“Just spoke to Uncle Miles. He's told me to watch your left hook, and not to trust you.”

“He's probably right.”

“Said you lied to get him off the Force.”

Yeah, well.

“Why?”

Huh. Miles had never bothered to ask. Maybe Rachel wasn't the brains in the family after all.

“What does he think?”

“He had no idea. I think that's why he hates you so much – 'cause it doesn't make sense.”

“Hmmm.”

“Bass?”

He wonders if she knows what it does to him, hearing his name slip out of her mouth like that. He pushes his laptop away, and smooths the drop of precum all over the head of his cock. Strangles it a little; tugs slowly.

“Charlie,” he grunts. “Hang up the phone now.”

“Why?”

“Because ...” he pumps hard, and the groan rips out of his chest. “Why the fuck do you think?”

“Oh.” The silence vibrates between them, and it makes him ease off, disgusted with himself. What sort of monster -

“So – am I on my knees, or on my back?”

Bass swallows, brain screaming at him to hang up. He'd burnt his bridges with Miles, but this … this would be declaring war. And he liked the kid. Didn't want her in the middle of it. But … he can see her already, that lithe golden body coiled at his feet, taunting him with her uncle's smirk. _C'mon, Monroe. Break the rules! Isn't this what you do?_ And she's right. His fucking speciality, doing all those things no decent man would do.

“Between my legs, off the edge of the bed,” he grits out, pushing himself up to sitting to make it more real. His imagination supplies the messy tumble of her hair trapping all the light in the dark room, and eyes that scorch like blue flame when she glances up, then slowly licks her lips in a deliberate, excruciating tease. His hips would jerk helplessly, and Charlie would flash him that infuriating smirk before she lowered her mouth to his rigid cock, committing him to pure damnation.

He must have said something, maybe even shouted, because she's giggling on the other end of the phone when he thinks to listen. “Goodness. That sounded fun. What am I doing … exactly?”

The last word comes out in a jagged huff that tells him she's far from unaffected. Not enough, though. 

“You're sucking my cock, Charlie. You're on your knees, tearing up my thighs with your fingernails and trying really fucking hard to deep throat me.”

He knows he's hit the jackpot when there's nothing but harsh breathing on the line, followed by the tiniest of whimpers. He hears her bed creak, and his cock starts to throb with the mental pictures that creates.

“Bass ...” 

“Not gonna come in your mouth, though. Need you too bad for that.”

Her whimper is both question and demand.

“Get you to crawl into my lap. Slide down slow. Want to feel every inch of that sweet, hot cunt.”

“Je-Jesus.” Charlie's sardonic drawl is gone, replaced by something thick and urgent. “Wanna ride you. Hard.”

He moans at the thought, and hasn't even finished the stroke before his body starts to jerk. He collapses back onto his pillows and returns his attention to her, muttering encouragement and barking orders as she pushes herself up and over. He's hard again by the time they say goodbye, and this time he's brutal with himself, hard and fast as he remembers her increasingly breathless responses. She likes to be in charge, Miss Charlie Matheson. Right up 'til the point 'til where she's begging to be told what to do.

Just like someone else he used to know.

*

He's kind of impressed. She frowns at him balefully when he wanders into the morning briefing mid-sermon, and then gives him the briefest of nods when he hands her a cup of the overpriced organic coffee that she loves. He's expecting some sort of reaction after their mutual indiscretion last night, but she simply moves to one side to let him lean on the desk next to her, swigging away at his peace offering, body warm and still alongside his. 

There's not even a touch of colour in her cheeks and – bravo, Miss Charlotte. A command performance. Bass can't keep the chuckle in.

It's a mistake, given Clayton is currently fuming about the state of their expense returns, and his is the patchiest in the precinct.

“I'm sorry, Monroe – did I say something funny? Like – maybe my detectives should try and process this year's receipts this year? Because I'm not sure if you think I'm a bookkeeper or an archaeologist, but I know I'm goddamned sick of getting tattered pieces of paper covered in goddamned heiroglyphics!”

He grunts a grudging public sorry then catches Clayton's eye when everyone else is focused on the first of the crime scene reports. Fuck you, he mouths, mostly for the pleasure of watching her boil with fury. That, plus the fact that Nora sometimes needs a reminder of why her record is still spotless. How she got that that job in the first place. 

Someone had to be the fall guy, and in the little universe that had been Bass and Miles and Nora, he'd been the logical choice. Ochoa was already suspicious of Miles, his role as the gang's enforcer in question after one too many convenient escapes. Nora benefited from entrenched misogyny – no one thought to question the comings and goings of a junkie stripper – and Bass was a big time importer, rolling in cash thanks to a successful trade in Colombia's finest.

They'd never been friends, he and Nora, even though he remembers the taste of her skin and the clutch of her body. But they were the twin moons to the glowering, unpredictable planet that was Miles Matheson, and this didn't require friendship. Just sacrifice. 

Nora brought the drugs in, and sewed them into his cuffs, and collar, even the soles of his shoes. Bass got drunk one night and shared his worry about Miles going native with another undercover cop, and the rumour mill did the rest. When the raid came, Bass made sure to flash his badge in Ochoa's face while Miles was led away with the rest. 

The sick disbelief in his best friend's eyes was worth it, Bass told himself as he stared down from the stand at Miles' dismissal hearing. Ochoa would never be able to link his enforcer, Stu Redman, to the disgraced cop, Miles Matheson. He'd be safe, free to snuggle up to his brother's wife in the wilds of Bumfuck, Texas, relieved of the best friend who was a little too friendly for everyone's comfort. 

“Was he happy?” Miles asks Charlie as they file out of the briefing, head still full of the past.

She goggles at him and gestures to the whiteboard behind him. “Who? The perp? Or the guy who caught him?”

Bass finds himself staring at his shoes as he mutters the name, but Charlie catches it anyway. She tilts her head curiously, but answers anyway.

“Sometimes. He'd come and go when we were kids – he and Dad never got on for long,” she grimaces. “But since Dad left, yeah. And then when he and Mom moved back up here, and started talking about getting married,” her shrug was expressive, and self-explanatory. Everything he didn't want to hear.

“They've just moved in to a place in Yonkers,” she offers hesitantly. “I have to run over to the house tomorrow, to check out some wedding stuff. You could come with.”

He actually considers it for some unknown reason. Miles wouldn't want to see him, and Rachel's first instinct would be to slam the door in his face. But he wants to see Miles with Charlie, he realises slowly. Wants to spend time with the girl.

Bass takes another look at her glowing face, and the decision is easy. “Nah, Charlie. If I have to sit in a car with you for an hour and behave myself? All bets are off when we get to the other end. Your mother wanted to shoot me the last time we met – and I hadn't laid a hand on her daughter then.”

“Technically, you still haven't,” she points out, leading the way out to his car with a distinct sway to her step. 

Bass shoots a quick glance around the garage, then presses her up against the side of the car.

“How long, exactly, do you think that's gonna last,” he murmurs, tracing the line of her jaw with a string of tiny kisses that end on the very corner of her mouth. 

“We're off at 6,” she breathes into his neck. “My bets on approximately 6.20. My place.”

“You're assuming I'm going let you out of the car,” he says. He'd meant it as a joke, but his hands seem to have a mind of their own, tracing sharp hipbones through the dark blue serge, and sliding around to find the place where her waistband gapes a little, allowing him to slip inside and stroke the small of her back.

Her eyes close as she shivers with pleasure, and he gives in to urge to kiss her properly. A gentle homage to her lips, he tells himself, but she opens her mouth with a moan, and seconds later his hands are fisting in her hair as his tongue finds all the secret places in her mouth.

“6.10 it is,” she says shakily when he lifts his head, and they're still laughing as they drive out.

They barely make it to lunch.

He's behind her in the queue at Tino's when he remembers he has bologna in his refrigerator at home, less than two miles away.

“Bread too, I think,” he shrugs, and they look at each other for a long moment, smirks threatening to overtake the bid at rationality.

“Well, if you have _bread_ ,” she teases, hooking her arm through his to lead him away.

His keys are still in the door when it slams closed under their combined weight. She's struggling with his pants and he's yanking at hers, the zips and buttons and buckles nearly impossible to manipulate in the haze of arousal.

He gets her shirt off easily, though, and loses himself in the thrust of rosebud-pink nipples, jutting pebbles under his tongue, between his lips, his teeth. She drags him away bodily in the end, forcing his head down her body to where she's finally bare.

“Thank God,” he grunts, and settles to his knees in front of her, looking up as he uses both hands to spread her wide.

“Thought I was supposed to be the one on my knees,” she pants, and he just grins as he takes a long, ostentatious lick, eyes closing at the taste of her.

“Couldn't taste you over the phone, girl. 'Sides. Would have come too soon if I knew you tasted like this.”

“Poor old man,” she mocks, and he punishes her with three fingers, deep inside, as he sucks on her hugely swollen clit.

“Just for that, I'm gonna make you come twice before I fuck you properly,” he growls in her ear after she collapses into his arms.

She's too far gone to find any sort of comeback, but still manages to raise an eyebrow.

Oh, game on, Bass remembers thinking.

It takes half the time to button themselves back into their clothes, even with the languor of really good sex hanging heavy in the room. Neither of them want to head back out into the world, but technically, they are still on shift. They at least need to report back to the precinct.

It's not until he sees the little Miata parked in front of his Monaro that he remembers the faint knocking that he'd heard at some point between the kitchen counter and the bedroom.

Nora unfolds herself from the little sportscar and stalks over to hand him a large envelope. “I suggest you open this in private,” she snaps, and heads back to her car without a word. 

*

He's dreaming about about tangled limbs and even more tangled webs when his phone jangles shortly after midnight. His head is still full of Charlie so he answers it with a sleepy “hey gorgeous”.

“If you are fucking her, I'm going to kill you.” Nora sounds more scared than homicidal, but he knows better than to think it's an idle threat. She'd probably kill him just to save Miles the trouble.

“Um. Who is this?”

“Don't even. Lucky for you and your poor, stupid cock, we need to talk about those photos.”

“Yeah. Any ideas where they came from?”

“Ochoa left a message on my phone. It's a tape. From the old days. I was kinda out of it, but you and Miles were … still managing.”

“Fuck.”

“Fuck indeed. Come see me first thing. We're going to have to get rid of him. Once and for all.”

Bass can't keep the bite out of his voice. “Yeah? You mean, like I wanted to fifteen years ago when you two were all, oooh, murder?” 

“It wasn't necessary then.”

“But it is now? To protect your career, Chief Inspector Clayton?”

“Yeah. And to make sure you have one. And to let Miles live his quiet little life without anyone asking just what he did back in the day. And maybe even to protect whatever fucked up thing you seem to have going with Miles' niece.”

“It's not fucked up,” is all he can think to say.

Nora doesn't bother to say goodbye, and he drifts back to sleep analysing that little noise she made just before the line went dead. Scorn, he decides. Not sympathy, or sorrow. Had to be scorn.

He's groaning with lack of sleep when he collapses into one of the chairs in her office the next morning.

“I expected you at five,” she says coolly, all emotion long gone. “He sent me a digital copy, obviously taken from a VHS. So I guess you're looking for a tape. How are you going to get in?”

“He knows I'm a cop. Gonna have to be a straight raid. Anything incriminating lying around the evidence room?”

Nora winces, and he has to give her credit. Shit like that had stopped when she took over as chief. Guess it helped, knowing all the tricks. But …

“Needs fucking must, Nora.”

Her lips quirk in memory of the days when that credo had ruled their lives. He smiles back, and she shrugs a little in agreement. Bass knows he will find whatever he needs somewhere in his possession, sometime soon. Her past as a teenage break-in artist had always come in handy.

“I'll announce the raid at the briefing tomorrow. We'll go in hard, mid-afternoon. Be ready.”

He accedes with a mocking salute, and leaves her office before anyone knows he was ever in there.

*

“What do you mean I'm not going with you?”

Any angrier and her frigging braid would be standing straight up, Bass thinks sourly. But there's no debating this – no way was he taking Charlie Matheson into Ochoa's den of fucking vipers.

He hadn't figured on Charlie Matheson, though.

When Nora announces the strike team, her eyes flick over his and those mocking lips curl slightly. “Monroe and Matheson to lead,” she concludes, and one look at Charlie's triumphant face tells him everything he needs to know.

“What'd you do?” he hisses, knowing that Nora wouldn't be any more willing to risk Miles' niece than he was.

“Uncle Miles said Ms Clayton was all about competence and pulling your weight. I simply reminded her of that,” she says smugly, and mocks him with her satisfied-cat smile.

“I don't want you anywhere near a fucking psychopath like that!”

“Funny. But when I was assigned to you, that's pretty much what Miles said,” she hits back. 

He's too busy grinding his teeth to complain after that, stalking out to the car to see what intel he can scare up on Ochoa's movements. He can't shake her though, and she hangs in the background as he shakes down one informant after another.

“Kinda brutal,” is all she says, but he quiets her with raised brow.

“You don't know what brutal looks like, kid. Trust me. It's going to get worse.”

He hates being fucking right.

He goes looking for Ochoa's bookie, a slimy dude called Gould who's been hanging out at Chins on 50th for fucking ever. Gould's not changed, but the bouncers are too alert, and there are guns everywhere.

Ochoa is waiting for them.

“Detective Monroe. And a very beautiful girl. How surprising. How about we all sit down for a civilised discussion, uh?”

Their discussion culminates in three broken teeth, what he suspects is a broken rib, and a humiliating roll down the front steps of the precinct after he's thrown out the door of a moving vehicle.

“They've got Charlie,” is the only explanation he's willing to take the time to offer. 

He's still spitting blood when she pulls the strike team together, pushing the raid several hours ahead. Two bags of cocaine are still sitting under the front seat of his car, but it's moved beyond that, now. Ochoa has taken one of their own, and the team of ten doubles in size as Nora calls in every favour she's owed.

He slips out the back before they can move out. His partner. Matheson and Monroe. His responsibility.

*

It's all gone wrong.

He found her tied to a chair, in front of a videotape. Three writhing bodies, two men bent over the sultry brunette, but more interested in each other than they were in her. The moment they came together in a storm of frenzied emotion, the rangy dark-haired man fucking furiously into his blond lover, the drugs stripping away all the walls they had built between them.

It was the first time Miles had ever kissed him, Bass remembers sadly. That had been the real intimacy, knowing he was more than just another body. That he was actually desired for himself.

But Charlie's seeing none of that. She refuses to meet his eyes, simply jumps to her feet when he slices through the tape binding her hands and feet, and grabs the spare gun.

“Not a lot of bullets,” he warns her. It had been expensive, getting in.

They make it as far as the ground floor before the thunder of running feet suggests Ochoa's reinforcements have caught up with them. He reloads, and finds he's down to his last cartridge. 

Charlie doesn't even have a full cartridge left. 

“Get outta here,” he yells, and her eyes flash at him in refusal.

“That's an order, Matheson!” he shouts, and withdraws his cover, forcing her to pull back. “Just. Keep. Going. Do as you're fucking told!”

He waits until she clears the doorway, and gives her a moment or two to make it onto the street before chambering his last round. Six bullets. She'll head for the car, calling backup. He shouldn't have gone in without the shock troops in the first place, but he couldn't wait. He wasn't about to risk losing her.

Ochoa is closer now, waving his goons away as he scents the victory.

“You think you got away with it? All these years? No. A man does not forget these things. I remember you, and Chief Inspector Clayton, and that bastard Matheson. You think we didn't know you were cops? Hah! We just had to sprinkle you with a little fairy dust and wait for you to fall under it's spell. But then – you were hardly pure, were you? So many secrets. I was watching that day, you know? The way you two snuffle like puppies when you licked it from her body? But who ended up fucking who, hah? No wonder she hates you.”

Bass' heart lurches for a moment before he remembers Ochoa is talking about Nora, not Charlie. He shrugs, even though Nora has never said it, he kind of knew it was true. She loved Miles. So did he. It was never going to end well.

But now he loves Charlie, something within him protests. Only Charlie matters.

Bass chambers his last, lonely bullet, and drags a long, dizzying breath into his lungs. Regret is tearing at him already, all those things he'll never do again or feel again, and the urge to say goodbye brings stinging tears to his eyes.

But this is his good end. This is the way it was meant to be.

Monroe and Matheson. Matheson and Monroe.

He steps around the door frame and leaps toward Ochoa, firing at the last possible moment. He'd covered more ground than he'd expected, so his handgun is practically pushing into the other man's forehead, absolutely point blank, when he squeezes the trigger. It's so close that he can't escape the gore as the older man's brains erupt backwards with the force of the bullet. 

The tramp of boots running towards him registers slowly, and Bass throws down the gun, useless now. He pulls up his t-shirt to wipe his face clean - he's not about to die with another man's brain matter splattered all over his face – then turns to face Ochoa's guards.

But they're wearing blue, and in front of them, a young blonde woman has her handgun raised, her entire body quivering with the need to strike.

“You came back,” he says, and Charlie simply glares at him with an incredulous, unspoken “of course” before prowling straight past him to check the other rooms.

She doesn't talk to him again until the corpse is zipped into it's bag, and the tape still running on a loop in the back room is yanked into long spools of damaged videotape. 

“Should I be looking for any more?” she asks when he comes to find her. 

The urge to lie is overwhelming, but - she came back.

“Maybe. Miles lived here for four months. And that … it had happened before.”

The patrolmen are busy on the other side of the house, taping up the crime scene and clearing away the body, but Charlie glances around anyway. “The three of you, or you and Miles?”

“Both. All of the above, Charlie. Miles and I – it was a thing, okay? For a long time. And Nora helped hold him together when he needed it, so I'm not going to fucking apologise.”

“It's just sex, right?” she laughs bitterly, and the pales when he shakes his head.

“No. But it's ancient history. None of us – we're not those people anymore. We've grown up.”

“So this,” she waves her hands between them, finally asking the one question he wants to answer. “This is what? A bit of fun? Revenge? What?”

He swipes a hand over his eyes, soul heavy and patience at an end. “Whatever it is, kid. But if you think I'm that much of a bastard, why'd you come back? Revenge? Really?”

She harrumphs, and looks away. When she looks back, the resignation in her eyes hits him like fist. It's familiar, that damned-if-I-do, damned-if-I-don't look. He's seen it in the mirror every day for more than 20 years.

“You're my partner. And … whatever else we are. We'll figure it out.” 

He moves to her side and pulls her to her feet, refusing to relinquish her hand even when one of the techs glances into the room and goggles at them. “O-kay. Come on, soldier. Up and at 'em.”

A smile tugs at the corner of her mouth, reluctant and tentative at first, then suddenly lighting her whole face as she swings into step next to him. 

“Lead on, General Monroe.”

_fin_


End file.
